Gatsby Wordpress Novela Theme is a Gatsby theme plugin that converts a headless WordPress blog into a static website with the Novela design skin.
What is Gatsby Wordpress Novela Theme?
Gatsby Wordpress Novela Theme is a Gatsby theme plugin and example repository for creating blogs from a headless WordPress CMS. It takes configuration pointing to a WordPress site, pulls posts, pages, categories, tags, and media through the WordPress source plugin, and outputs a static blog front end built with Gatsby and React. The project is developed by the Draftbox team and is used by the Draftbox product itself. It includes both the theme plugin and an example site in one repository.
What makes Gatsby Wordpress Novela Theme stand out?
The theme is a frontend replacement for the WordPress engine, combining the Novela theme skin with Gatsby's static site benefits. Key features include:
- Novela theme by Narrative — an editorial blog design that serves as the visual skin for the entire site.
- SEO optimized — built-in meta handling and structured output to help search engines index blog posts.
- Fully responsive — layouts adjust cleanly across mobile, tablet, and desktop breakpoints.
- Gatsby images — responsive image component that handles lazy loading and format optimization.
- Styled 404 page — a custom designed error page instead of the default browser message.
- RSS feed — generates a machine-readable feed for blog readers and aggregators.
- AMP pages — output Accelerated Mobile Pages versions of posts for faster mobile delivery.
- Sitemap — an XML sitemap is created automatically for search engine crawling.
- Contact form — a ready-to-use contact form component is included.
- Subscribe form — a subscribe component for email capture is included.
- Social sharing — share buttons are provided for common social platforms.
- Composable and extensible — built as a Gatsby theme, so site-specific overrides and additional features can be layered on top.
Who should use Gatsby Wordpress Novela Theme?
- Developers who manage WordPress blogs — replace the PHP frontend with a static Gatsby site while continuing to author content in WordPress.
- Draftbox developers or partners — the theme is the same one powering Draftbox, so it serves as a reference implementation for custom deployments.
- Bloggers seeking speed and security — a static output from WordPress removes the need for server-side rendering at request time.
What can you do with it?
- Start a new blog from scratch — use the starter repository, connect your WordPress endpoint, and get a fast static blog with minimal setup.
- Migrate an existing WordPress site — point the theme at a working WordPress installation to generate a static version of the blog.
- Customize the blog experience — extend the theme with Gatsby theme shadowing to change components, add pages, or integrate other plugins.
How does it work?
After cloning the repository, you create a .wordpress-config.json file in the example directory containing your WordPress base URL, protocol, and whether the site is self-hosted or on wordpress.com. For wordpress.com, additional keys are required as described in the gatsby-source-wordpress documentation. Then install dependencies with yarn and run yarn workspace example develop to launch the example locally.
FAQ
Is Gatsby Wordpress Novela Theme free?
Yes, the project is released under the MIT license by Draftbox. That means you can use it in commercial and personal projects without licensing fees.
What WordPress setups are supported?
Both self-hosted WordPress and wordpress.com hosted blogs are supported. Self-hosted sites need only the base URL and protocol, while wordpress.com blogs require extra authentication settings from the gatsby-source-wordpress plugin.
How do I get started quickly?
The recommended path is to use the separate starter repository, which is set up for new sites. Alternatively, clone this repository, add your WordPress config, and run the local development command.
